1608 wrote:Chris back in 1969 as an apprentice chippy, I remember the absolute panic among some of the old boys when everything was moving over to metric. And, the thought that their ancient and cherished rules and tape measures would be redundant didn't bear thinking about.I'm assuming you are a wood butcher and not a fishn'chip merchant.

Hey I was a wood worker and used metric drawings long before we went metric. For me it was the opposite, as I was often given an engineering imperial drawing to work from. Not so easy when all machines and tools were metric, as most were German machines & tools. Still managed to make & fake antique furniture though.

Hi 1608 yes I am indeed a time served carpenter ( don't know who I upset in a former life ) . A few years ago I worked on restoration of an old house , we had a jack the lad young carpenter with all the toys who knew everything ! When it came to pitching the new roof he had absolutely no clue what to do stood there like a little boy waiting for someone to help. Seems that they are only taught to use roof trusses and had never seen a roofing square . Oh how time's have changed .The old boys who clipped me round the ear on a regular basis would have had a melt down .All the bestChris

ChrisTheChippy wrote:Hi 1608 yes I am indeed a time served carpenter ( don't know who I upset in a former life ) . A few years ago I worked on restoration of an old house , we had a jack the lad young carpenter with all the toys who knew everything ! When it came to pitching the new roof he had absolutely no clue what to do stood there like a little boy waiting for someone to help. Seems that they are only taught to use roof trusses and had never seen a roofing square . Oh how time's have changed .The old boys who clipped me round the ear on a regular basis would have had a melt down .All the bestChris

Hey Chris,

Your remarks made me smile and I can fully agree with them. As an apprenticed Toolmaker and with nearly 47 years in the game, for the last six years I’ve been working alongside a ‘degree’ qualified mechanical design engineer who is a whiz on computers but can’t sketch freehand, or produce properly toleranced engineering prints, and has me frequently looking like this.

Cheers,

Steve

Keep shiny side up.

These are my principles, if you don’t like them, I have others. (Groucho Marx)

Prior to retirement, I was a senior engineer in the design and development department of a large, multi-national company. At school, I was taught imperial measurements. As I went on to higher education, it became metric and I'm happy to work in both and can, for practical purposes, convert, mix and match the two in my head. What I did have problems with were drawing produced by our colonial cousins in our factories the other side of the pond. They insisted on working in 'fractions'. What the hell is 27/64ths anyway!!!